Behaviour Change

PROPAGANDA FOR CHANGE is a project created by the students of Behaviour Change (ps359) and Professor Thomas Hills at the Psychology Department of the University of Warwick. This work was supported by funding from Warwick's Institute for Advanced Teaching and Learning.

Thursday, February 4, 2016

When this Nike advert came out
I remember thinking it was one of the best adverts I had ever seen. It was
funny, it was different and it had Cristiano Ronaldo in it – what a brilliant
advert it was. But what’s so interesting about this advert is how memorable it
is. It has over 24 million views on YouTube and, as you can tell by the title
the uploader wrote, some people really think it’s one of the best adverts
ever.

But why?

It’s no secret that celebrity
endorsement is extremely common these days. In fact, Malik & Guptha (2014)
show that celebrity endorsement is one of the most valuable factors in
persuading consumers to purchase a product.

Clearly celebrity endorsement
is extremely effective and there are many reasons for this. We like celebrities,
because they’re ‘cool’ right? They’ve got the most desirable lives and we want
to be successful, like them. Celebrities are attractive and everyone wants to
know about what they get up to, they have the best cars and the best homes, so
it only makes sense that when they are using a product or associated with a
brand that we want to try that brand out too – maybe we will be more like them
if we do?

However, Nike went the extra
mile, they didn’t just get a celebrity, they got a bunch of some of the most
famous footballers in the world, the most attractive ones, and combined our
liking for them with humour – ensuring we are very satisfied. You see, not only
does celebrity endorsement sell, but so do attractiveness and humour.

A study by Dion, Berscheid,
and Walster (1972) asked participants to look at pictures of men and women who
were perceived to be either unattractive, average looking or attractive and
rate their personality. They found that attractive people were perceived to
have more socially desirable personality traits than average looking or
unattractive people – suggesting we really are influenced by good looking
people.

So if attractiveness is
associated with more positive traits, having an attractive celebrity associated
with your brand gives you a good chance at making people want to be associated
with your brand too.

But why stop there? Just to
top it all off, Nike added humour.

Bohner, Crow, Erb and Schwartz (1992)
suggested that happier people pay less attention to detail in an advert and are
more susceptible to the peripheral route of persuasion, including weaker cues
like the attractiveness of the source.

So there you have it, Nike
came up with the perfect advert. It’s one that people enjoy watching because
it’s funny. It makes them listen to the attractive people on screen more
because it is funny, oh and the attractive people are some of the most famous
people in football – just to make sure we know that if we buy Nike clothing then
we will be more like them.